Commissioning and producing new works are long-standing traditions at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park with 90 world premieres produced to date and more than 25 new play commissions. Made in Cincy: New Works Festival further elevates that commitment with an exciting annual event that will illuminate the creative process for audiences by inviting them to witness, participate in and champion the creation of new American plays and musicals.
Made in Cincy: New Works Festival successfully piloted in May with plays by Nathan Alan Davis, Maggie Lou Rader and Isaiah Reaves. All the play readings were sold out with waiting lists, and the audiences engaged in conversations with the playwrights, contributing to this critical stage in development. It was a testament that our community shows up for artists and for new work.
The festival will officially launch this fall around the commissioned world premiere of Talk by nationally renowned playwright and Cincinnati native Theresa Rebeck. Development work with artists will take place in the week of September 28, culminating in a public schedule of events on October 2 and 3, 2026. The artists and their plays in development this fall are listed below, and the schedule will be announced soon.
To get a sense of what happens at Made in Cincy, check out this recap video from the spring.
Commissioned by the Playhouse’s Jerome Fey Endowment for New Plays
This modern day look at Shakespeare's Hamlet through the lens of an awkward teenage girl named Ophelia is set at a Catholic high school in the early aughts. As Ophelia grapples with the death of her mother, she falls for a sad boy who also has recently lost a parent.
Marco, meet Marco. Two teenagers with parallel lives but opposite outlooks collide and become unlikely best friends. Despite their mutual love of comics and shared sanctuary at a local comic book shop, life begins pulling Marco and Marco apart. Will the help of a time-bending Aztec superhero be enough to bind their fates back together? The Myth of the Two Marcos explores friendships formed on the knife-edge of adolescence, the little moments that might have changed everything and the relationships that become our origin stories.
The Best Little Cat House in Scab Holler steps into the lively world of the Conti House, a small-town Missouri brothel run by the formidable Maude DeBerry and her spirited crew. Life is running smoothly — until a customer unexpectedly drops dead mid-visit. As the women scramble to hide the body from a nosy sheriff and a mysterious visitor from Chicago, chaos erupts in the most hilarious ways. A raucous, sex-positive farce about friendship, survival and the family you choose.
Amy Berryman is a playwright, screenwriter, actor
and teaching artist originally from Seattle by way of West Texas. Her
play Walden, produced by Sonia Friedman and directed by Ian
Rickson, had its world premiere on London’s West End in May 2021.
Walden recently premiered off-Broadway in 2024 at Second Stage
directed by Whitney White, and was a nominee for the John Gassner Award
from the Outer Critics' Circle and a nominee for Outstanding Production
of a Play from the Drama League. Walden was also produced at
TheaterWorks in Hartford in August 2021, directed by Mei Ann Teo
(New York Times Critic’s Pick). Other full-length plays include
Alien Girls (O'Neill Finalist 2024); The New Galileos
(O’Neill Finalist 2019); Three Year Summer; and Epiphany,
Or What Would You? (Finalist Shakespeare’s New Contemporaries,
O'Neill Semi-Finalist 2020). Her work has been developed at Premiere
Stages, Kitchen Dog, Caltech, East 15, Portland Stage, Great Plains
Theatre Conference, Valdez Last Frontier Theatre Conference and AMiOS,
among others. Amy is a Macdowell Fellow and is under commission from
Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and Little Island.
Tony Meneses is a proud immigrant born in
Guadalajara, Mexico, and raised in Albuquerque and Dallas. His work has
premiered at Two River Theater (Guadalupe in the Guest
Room, The Women of Padilla, The Hombres, A
Thousand Maids), The Denver Center (twenty50), and The Old
Globe (El Borracho). He is an alum of the Soho
Rep. Writer/Director Lab, Ars Nova Play Group, Sundance Institute
Playwrights Retreat at Ucross Foundation, The Playwrights Realm Writing
Fellowship, and Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Youngblood. His work has been
previously developed at the Lark Play Development Center Playwrights’
Week, Berkeley Rep’s The Ground Floor, The Denver Center’s Colorado New
Play Summit, The Old Globe’s Powers New Voices Festival (2020, 2025),
South Coast Rep’s Pacific Playwrights Festival and New SCRipt Series,
TheatreSquared’s Arkansas New Play Festival, Two River Theater's
Crossing Borders Festival (2018, 2023, 2025), and The 2025 O’Neill
National Playwrights Conference. He is currently a resident playwright
in New Dramatists, is a two-time recipient of The Kennedy Center Latino
Playwriting Award and is published by Dramatists Play
Service and Theatrical Rights Worldwide. He's been previously
commissioned by The Denver Center, Two River Theater, South Coast Rep,
The Old Globe, and The Juilliard School. Education: The University of
Texas at Austin, Iowa Playwrights Workshop, Juilliard.
An award-winning playwright and AEA actor, Maggie Lou Rader tells epic stories about epic women. After growing up in rural southwest Oklahoma, she attended William Jewell College, Oxford University, and the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. Her work has been seen off-Broadway in New York, as well as Chicago and Los Angeles, and on Tony Award-winning stages. She’s won the Theater J Patty Abramson Jewish Play Prize with Theatre J in DC and the Notre Dame College New Play Festival and was selected for Utah Shakespeare Festival’s Words Cubed Program and Red Bull Theater’s New Short Play Festival. She’s been a finalist for the Henley Rose Playwrighting Award for Women, Central Florida Community Arts New Play Festival, twice for the Lanford Wilson Festival, a semi-finalist for the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, The Road Theater Summer Playwrights Festival, the Garry Marshall Theatre New Works Festival, Dayton Playhouse’s Future Fest, and UP Theater's Renewal Reading Series. Her work has been developed at DePaul University, Human Race Theatre, Inkwell Theatre, Skeleton Rep, and Occasional Drawl Productions and seen at Know Theatre, InBocca Performance, Commonwealth Theatre Center, The Marsh, Eclectic Full Contact Theatre, Idaho Shakespeare, Urban Stages, Theatre Pro Rata, and colleges from coast to coast.
NANCY AND MARK
DAWES
DIGI AND MIKE SCHUELER
